Caltech’s Shri Kulkarni Receives Shaw Astronomy Prize ‘for Groundbreaking Discoveries’

Shri Kulkarni, Distinguished Professor at Caltech, has been awarded the 2024 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his transformative work with the Palomar Transient Factory and its successor, the Zwicky Transient Facility, which have revolutionized our understanding of transient astronomical phenomena.

Shri Kulkarni, George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at Caltech, has been awarded the prestigious 2024 Shaw Prize in Astronomy “for his groundbreaking discoveries on millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical phenomena . objects,” according to the Shaw Prize Foundation, which has bestowed this honor since 2004. The prize citation further states that “Kulkarni’s contributions to astronomy in the time domain culminated in the design, construction, and direction of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and its successor, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), which revolutionized our understanding of the time-varying optical sky.

The Shaw Prize consists of three annual prizes: the Astronomy Prize, the Life Sciences and Medicine Prize, and the Mathematical Sciences Prize. Each prize comes with a $1.2 million reward.

“I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was the winner of the 2024 Shaw Astronomy Prize last night. At first, my wife didn’t believe me, having suffered several of my pranks in the past! » said Kulkarni. “ZTF is possible because of a skilled and dedicated crew at Palomar Observatory, the sophistication of Caltech’s optical observatories instrumentation program, and, finally, Caltech’s outstanding students and postdoctoral fellows. ZTF is only possible at Caltech, which values ​​the exception.

Kulkarni made a wide variety of discoveries during his career. In his recent Watson Lecture at Caltech titled “Illuminating the Dynamic Night Sky: Discoveries from the Zwicky Transient Facility,” he discussed his passion for building instruments to explore unexplored areas in astronomy. He built a total of 10 instruments during his career. “My motto has been build a gadget big enough and things will happen,” he said.

Some of Kulkarni’s earlier discoveries include the first millisecond pulsara rapid rotation neutron star which emitted more than 600 precisely spaced pulses per second; and the first brown dwarf, or “failed” star, discovered in 1995 using a then-new instrument, the Palomar Observatory’s 60-inch telescope. In 1997, Kulkarni and his colleagues were the first to measure the distance to a gamma-ray burst – a brief, intense burst of gamma rays from the cosmos – showing that the energetic event had its origin far from our galaxy, billions light years.

Working with a graduate student, Kulkarni then developed the STARE2 (Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2) instrument to study fast radio bursts, mysterious bursts of radio waves whose origins were unknown. STARE2, which consisted of three bucket-sized radio antennas spread across the southwestern United States, captured a massive fast radio burst in our own galaxy and helped pinpoint its origin to a type of star dead magnetic called magnetar.

To capture the dynamic night sky, which includes exploding stars, asteroids and more, Kulkarni developed the PTF camera and its successor, ZTF, funded by institutions around the world and two major grants from the National Science Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. ZTF continues to operate from Caltech’s Palomar Observatory.

According to the Shaw Prize press release, “ZTF has discovered thousands of rare events, including extremely bright supernovae, luminous red novae, calcium-rich spacer transients, and black hole disruptions of stars. ZTF also found a star swallowing one of its planets, one of the closest and brightest supernovae in history, a new orbital class of asteroids, binary stars with orbital periods as short as seven minutes which are strong sources of low-frequency gravitational radiation, and many other exotic systems and rare events whose properties are just beginning to be understood. PTF and ZTF have trained a generation of young astronomers who are now at the forefront of the field of temporal astronomy.

Kulkarni was born in Maharashtra, India. He received his master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1978 and his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1983. He came to Caltech on a Millikan Fellowship in 1985 and joined the faculty in 1987, as a assistant professor of astronomy (1987-90), associate professor (1990-92), professor (1992-96), professor of astronomy and planetary sciences (1996-2001), professor MacArthur (2001-17), and professor George Ellery Hale of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences (2017). -here). He also served as Director General of Astronomy (1997-2000) and Director of Caltech Optical Observatories (2006-2018). He is a member of the Royal Society of London, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Kulkarni has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award and the Dan David Award. He is the author or co-author of more than 60 articles in the journal Nature at the age of 60, one of his life goals.

Past Caltech Shaw Prize winners include Edward (Ed) C. Stone, David Morrisroe Distinguished Professor of Physics (2019); the late Ronald WP Drever, professor of physics emeritus; and Kip S. Thorne (BS ’62), the Richard P. Feynman Distinguished Professor of Theoretical Physics (who received the award in 2016 with MITRainer Weiss for the foundation LIGO); and Peter Goldreich, Lee A. DuBridge Distinguished Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics (2007).